Hello and thank you for joining me on this blog hop to celebrate The Altenew Educator Program and Love & Friendship. If you are following along on the hop, you have come from the talented Nandini Karmarkar of Paint, Paper, Scissors. Your next stop on the blog is the amazing Christine Pennington. If you get lost along the way, see the full list on the Altenew Card Blog.
I am excited and honored to be a part of a very selective group of such talented people. The Altenew Educator Program really helped me to gain confidence in my card making and helped set me on a path to teach others about the joy in making and sending cards. Each amazing Altenew Academy class taught me how to improve my skills and introduced me to new ways of looking at my crafting supplies. The support from the Altenew Educator Program Coordinators really helps boost your confidence, improve your card designs, as well as your photography and blogging skills. Watercoloring is a medium I struggled with but the Altenew Academy has three great watercolor classes that helped me to improve my skills: Watercolor Basics and Beyond, Watercolor Creative Media and Stunningly Simple Watercolor Techniques. I took all three of these classes and they were wonderful. 

Today I will be featuring the Altenew watercolor pan set which is a 36 half pan watercolor set that coordinates perfectly with the Altenew Inks. I made three cards for this blog hop that feature three ways to watercolor: with black pigment ink, white heat embossing and no line. Thank you for joining me on this hop to celebrate the Altenew Educator Program.

I recently met a crafty friend on line and we met up to craft together. She introduced me to a great Birch Press Layered die, Adora. I’ve loved Birch Press dies but just hadn't ever used them so I quickly grabbed three colors of paper out of my scrap stash and die cut them. The Adora die has a repeating heart pattern and after I cut out the patterns, I was left with all these colorful hearts. I didn't want to waste them so I decided to make some cards but needed white as a neutral to go with my color palette. I grabbed the Altenew Radial Hearts cover die which has a repeating heart pattern and cut out a piece of Neenah solar white. I saved all these heart pieces and decided to use them on a card. Well I ended up making 5 cards and would like to explain how I made them using dies and leftovers. Please read on and note that affiliate links are used in this post. If you decide to purchase the items through these links, I get a small commission at no cost to you. Thank you for your support.

In November of 2018, I embarked on a journey where I was not sure was going to lead; I became a participant in the Altenew Educator Certification Program. For the past 5 months I have been steadily working towards certification under the guidance and tutelage of Virginia Lu and Erum Tasneem who have been so gracious with their time and positive feedback. Throughout this journey, I have taken 25 classes at Altenew Academy, made 44 cards, one tag, four framed pieces of art and now taught one class. I feel proud of my accomplishments and happy to be able to share a love of crafty techniques to my friends and get them excited to try something new. Please read on for how the class went, the fun we had and what the students learned in the class. If you would like to read about how I prepared for the class, click here. Affiliate links are used in this post. If you choose to purchase through these links, I may receive a small commission at no cost to you. Thank you for your support.

For the final challenge of the Altenew Educator Certification Program, I will be teaching a 2 hour card class full of techniques to 4-10 people. After the class, I will be blogging about how it went but I wanted to do a post before the class to discuss building an idea, setting up for a class and figuring how to break down ideas and make them accessible to others. Please read on for how I plan on teaching this class.

Since starting last November with the Altenew Educator Certification Program, I have made 42 cards, four pieces of home decor and one tag using supplies from Altenew. I’ve enjoyed this journey and every class I took through Altenew Academy. I am currently working my way through Level 3 Certification and this last class for the Altenew Educator Program was Sentiments with Impact. I looked forward to this class as cards need sentiments and having the right thing to say or the right way to say it sometimes gets lost behind the technique or the main image on the card. The instructor focused on using sentiments in different ways to make them the main focus on a card. I was intrigued by stacking sentiments and using different stamps that say the same thing to provide impact to the message. For today’s card I used small sentiments from four different Altenew stamp sets to create a background. Please continue reading to learn how I put together this card. For your convenience the materials I used are listed at the bottom of this post. Affiliate links are used at no cost to you. If you decide to purchase through these links I may receive a small commission thank you for your support.

I’ve been playing around with water color for a little less than a year. I like the look but have trouble with the messy aspect of it. In Altenew’s class, Watercoloring Basics and Beyond, the instructor discussed the importance of letting the paint mix and blend freely. The last lesson encouraged free hand watercoloring without using stamps. When I watercolor, I typically just color in a stamped image. Watercoloring without having the stamped image as a guide freaked me out. In the spirit of just trying this out and learning something new, I decided to go for it. The class is designed to showcase the Altenew Watercolor Pan set. I don’t have this watercolor set so I used ink from the Altenew Watercolor Brush Markers instead. These markers are vibrant with rich colors. Please read on for how I put together this card. Affiliate links are used in this post. If you decide to purchase through these links, I may receive a small commission at no cost to you. Thank you your support.

Although cards are a 2-D art, I really try to add dimension to my cards. I typically achieve this through layering papers, die cuts and adding sequins. In the Altenew Academy class, One Layer Wonders, the instructor pushes the boundaries for how to achieve the look of dimension in only one layer. I took this challenge on and using the idea of drop shadows and lines to build a focal point throughout the image, I built a card using only one layer of paper. To be fair, I did do all the work on an A2 panel and then attached that panel to a card base. Please read on for how I was able to achieve dimension and depth using just one layer. 

Cards are essentially a 2-D medium. Adding texture without adding too much bulk is a papercrafter's dream. Altenew Academy class, A Touch of Texture helps in making this dream a reality. Within the class, the instructor discusses using background stamps, specialty paper or even scoring to achieve texture on a card. I was intrigued to try using both scoring and ink blending to achieve some different texture. Score lines are creases in a paper made by folding or using a bone folder. To see how I used just a bone folder, ink and paper to build texture on a card, please continue reading. Affiliate links are used within this post. If you choose to use these links to purchase products, I will receive a small commission at no cost to you. Thank you for your support. 

Altenew, in addition to its stamps, has a line of wonderful inks with matching watercolors and alcohol markers. Altenew sets up its inks into blending groups. By organizing the inks into blending groups this takes care of the guesswork of which inks would work well with other inks. Altenew alcohol artist markers work the same way. The artist markers are available in sets and all the colors within a set work together. In the Altenew academy class Creative Coloring the instructor uses Altenew alcohol artist markers to make some amazing backgrounds and images. I do not own the Altenew artist markers. For this card I’m using my Copic markers but following the techniques illustrated in the Altenew academy class on alcohol markers. For information on my entry into Copics, read a past blog post here. The biggest take away from the class was to practice, practice, practice blending. The first piece the instructor made was a rainbow blended background. I was really intrigued to try this out myself and it gave me an opportunity to use some of the Copic markers that I never use. Please keep reading to see how I made a rainbow background and turned it into a card. Affiliate links are used in this post. If you decide to purchase through these links I may receive a small commission at no cost to you. Thank you for your support.

Here it is....the final challenge of level 2. So far I have taken 20 Altenew Academy classes and made 37 cards. This has been a really great experience to improve my card presentation and to learn different techniques. For this challenge I had to make a home decor project using inspiration from some of the 20 classes I have taken. I decided to make some prints in the spirit of John Audubon’s nature prints. I had been planning on purchasing some Audubon original book plates but these are really expensive. The book plates have really simple images and have just a flower or birds with the species name in typeface. Altenew stamp sets have beautiful detailed images that I thought would work great for this project. Read on for how I put together these home decor pieces. If you have questions on the Altenew Educator Program, please let me know as I would be happy to talk about my experiences so far. I’ve included affiliate links in this post for the items I used to make these pieces. If you use these links to purchase the items, I may get a small commission at no cost to you. Thank you for your support.